Buchanan Asks, "What Do We Offer the World?"

WND.com ^ | 05-19-04 | Buchanan, Patrick J.

[Theodore R.]

What do we offer the world?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: May 19, 2004 1:00 a.m. Eastern

"So, how do we advance the cause of female emancipation in the Muslim world?" asks Richard Perle in "An End to Evil." He replies, "We need to remind the women of Islam ceaselessly: Our enemies are the same as theirs; our victory will be theirs as well."

Well, the neoconservative cause "of female emancipation in the Muslim world" was probably set back a bit by the photo shoot of Pfc. Lynndie England and the "Girls Gone Wild" of Abu Ghraib prison.

Indeed, the filmed orgies among U.S. military police outside the cells of Iraqi prisoners, the S&M humiliation of Muslim men, the sexual torment of their women raise a question. Exactly what are the "values" the West has to teach the Islamic world?

"This war ... is about – deeply about – sex," declaims neocon Charles Krauthammer. Militant Islam is "threatened by the West because of our twin doctrines of equality and sexual liberation."

But whose "twin doctrines" is Krauthammer talking about? The sexual liberation he calls our doctrine belongs to a '60s revolution that devout Christians, Jews and Muslims have been resisting for years.

What does Krauthammer mean by sexual liberation? The right of "tweeners" and teenage girls to dress and behave like Britney Spears? Their right to condoms in junior high? Their right to abortion without parental consent?

If conservatives reject the "equality" preached by Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, NARAL and the National Organization for Women, why seek to impose it on the Islamic world? Why not stand beside Islam, and against Hollywood and Hillary?

In June 2002 at West Point, President Bush said, "Moral truth is the same in every culture, in every time and in every place."

But even John Kerry does not agree with George Bush on the morality of homosexual unions and stem-cell research. On such issues, conservative Americans have more in common with devout Muslims than with liberal Democrats.

The president notwithstanding, Americans no longer agree on what is moral truth. For as someone said a few years back, there is a cultural war going on in this country – a religious war. It is about who we are, what we believe and what we stand for as a people.

What some of us view as the moral descent of a great and Godly republic into imperial decadence, neocons see as their big chance to rule the world.

In Georgia, recently, the president declared to great applause: "I can't tell you how proud I am of our commitment to values. ... That commitment to values is going to be an integral part of our foreign policy as we move forward. These aren't American values, these are universal values. Values that speak universal truths."

But what universal values is he talking about? If he intends to impose the values of MTV America on the Muslim world in the name of a "world democratic revolution," he will provoke and incite a war of civilizations America cannot win because Americans do not want to fight it. This may be the neocons' war. It is not our war.

When Bush speaks of freedom as God's gift to humanity, does he mean the First Amendment freedom of Larry Flynt to produce pornography and of Salman Rushdie to publish "The Satanic Verses" – a book considered blasphemous to the Islamic faith? If the Islamic world rejects this notion of freedom, why is it our duty to change their thinking? Why are they wrong?

When the president speaks of freedom, does he mean the First Amendment prohibition against our children reading the Bible and being taught the Ten Commandments in school?

If the president wishes to fight a moral crusade, he should know the enemy is inside the gates. The great moral and cultural threats to our civilization come not from outside America, but from within. We have met the enemy, and he is us. The war for the soul of America is not going to be lost or won in Fallujah.

Unfortunately, Pagan America of 2004 has far less to offer the world in cultural fare than did Christian America of 1954. Many of the movies, books, magazines, TV shows, videos and much of the music we export to the world are as poisonous as the narcotics the Royal Navy forced on the Chinese people in the Opium Wars.

A society that accepts the killing of a third of its babies as women's "emancipation," that considers homosexual marriage to be social progress, that hands out contraceptives to 13-year-old girls at junior high ought to be seeking out a confessional – better yet, an exorcist – rather than striding into a pulpit like Elmer Gantry to lecture mankind on the superiority of "American values."

[Bella_Bru]

And if he were Jewish he would support Sharon.

How is that? Have you been to Israel? I have. Both religious and secular Jews are free to do as they please. There is no 'morality police' that roam around beating girls on the ankles who have short skirts. There are night clubs, scantilly clad men and women, secular rock, rap, and pop,etc. No one forces any Jew to observe Shabbat.

Sharon is for freedom, not tyranny.

[GraniteStateConservative]

Who are those chicks?

: )

[GraniteStateConservative]

I think he's saying why is it wrong for him to have that authority in his own country? Pat doesn't subscribe to the tenets of Islam.

[GraniteStateConservative]

Too bad our operation in Iraq wasn't called Operation Kill the Terrorists.

[Bella_Bru]

Certain dietary presecriptions, etc., were practical guides which had to do with health--and those which were not health-related (no refrigeration, no pasteurization, etc.) were disciplinary.

You obviously know nothing about Judaism. Dietary restrictions had nothing to do with health issues.

[GraniteStateConservative]

consider whether you actually give a damn about the Iraqis at all

Where in the Constitution or the Federalist Papers does it say we should give a damn about the Iraqis?

[DannyTN]

"If not us, then who? We are the best ones to liberate Iraq. We are far from perfect."

All true. The fact is that dispite the debacle of the sexual abuse. We are going to have an open court marshall in Iraq. It will be followed intensly in the Middle East, because America's enemies will be too blinded by their desire to say "I told you so...America is the Great Satan" to realize the following. This public court marshall is going to be one of the greatest object lessons in how fair and just court battles are waged that America could hope to demonstrate to the middle east.

[GraniteStateConservative]

Our intentions were good, so it doesn't matter how it turns out-- sounds like something a liberal would say, but that's our policy, apparently.

[Hegemony Cricket]

Great post - a hale & hearty Amen!

[Anitius Severinus Boethius]

So the children became more moral because they were seperated?

You obviously have no idea what morality is. It's an internal state of being being reflected by external actions. Not external forces preventing someone from acting immorally.

I guess that you will be moving to ________ then, since the majority of us do not want to team up with the immoral culture of Islam to fight the immoral American culture.

(I left the blank because I can't think of a more moral nation. Maybe you can fill it in.)

[11th Earl of Mar]

Ummmmm...you have this problem with context, don't you? By the way, I read an OUTSTANDING column in Jewish World Review just the other day, written by a Jewish scholar on the topic of public education, in which he expressly advocated separating children by academic ability.

Uhhh... relevance???

And feel free to put into context Buchanan's column that claimed Holocaust survivors suffered from "group fantasies of martyrdom."

[general_re]

Where in the Constitution or Federalist Papers does it say you should give a damn about your wife? Can I assume that you therefore don't, or are you not willing to extend your argument in that direction for some reason?

[general_re]

I think he's saying why is it wrong for him to have that authority in his own country?

Because that "authority" is inherently and innately illegitimate, as Mill points out.

[Junior_G]

Our intentions were good, so it doesn't matter how it turns out-- sounds like something a liberal would say, but that's our policy, apparently.

Good observation.

[Aquinasfan]

In the public school distrcit in which my sister's children live, the junior high boys and girls need to be put on separate buses because oral sex on the school buses was so rampant.

Wow. I thought setting kids' hair on fire was bad, back in my day, the Led Zeppelin years. OK, it was a different form of evil. But this was unheard of. Thanks for enlightening me.

[cicero's_son]

When I see him occasionally on Mc Laugh-In Hour I get the impression he thinks it's all a joke

Likewise. Or that it's such a hopeless battle that he might as well be as outrageous as possible just to amuse himself.

Obviously Buchanan is not saying "we should side with the Islamists." He's making the point that in this vaunted "clash of civilizations" that so many seem to be hawking, our side ain't what it used to be.

You might say that it died under Wilson and was buried sometime around Vatican II.

[Anitius Severinus Boethius]

but he DOES believe that the typical (not nutso) practice of Islam has prevented moral decay.

In what sense?

Slavery still exists in most Islamic countries.
Adultery still exists in all Islamic countries.
Bastard children still exist in all Islamic countries.
Rape is still common in all Islamic countries.
Murder is still common in all Islamic countries.
Theft is still rampant in all Islamic countries.
Oppression of women (no education, no voice in society, no choice of marriage) is still common in all Islamic countries.

I guess technically you could say it hasn't grown worse since things are still the same as they have always been in the vast majority of Islamic nations: Might makes right and the voice of the prophet (i.e. the person in charge) is above petty things like "laws".

But does that matter? After all, some trailer trash girl pointed at a prisoner's privates, so this must mean that we are in a worse moral situation than Islamic countries, doesn't it?

[Ohioan]

Buchanan needs to get back on his med.

No, you need to open your eyes. The Feminist Agenda is not an American goal. If Richard Perle thinks it is, that is his problem. But we must not allow him to embroil America in endless conflict to promote a wacko war on nature.

Pat is right on the mark in the above column.

For more on Feminism, see Feminist Absurdity.

For how we should be fighting the War on Terror, see War 2001!.

William Flax

[verity]

lol

[GraniteStateConservative]

Did Mill advocate taking over every undemocratic nation and attempt to democratize them because freedom is God's gift to the world and we are the deliverers of that gift? You can agree that it's illegitimate, but deciding to go to war to liberate the world is a whole different issue.